


at the end of the desert

by spideywhiteys



Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [10]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Blood, Post-Nuclear War, Survival, Wasteland AU, as they deserve, because they are better than everyone else clearly, dystopian au, ino has a no good very bad day, love that for them, sorta survival horror but not in depth bc this is a oneshot, the uzumaki are probably not entirely human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28680873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideywhiteys/pseuds/spideywhiteys
Summary: Ino has lived her entire life in the wasteland of a world ravaged centuries ago by radiation. She's born a survivor, raised a survivor - but it still only takes one mistake. One mistake, and a sea of red under the desert.
Relationships: Yamanaka Ino & Uzumaki Mito
Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086938
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	at the end of the desert

**Author's Note:**

> DAY 10: Nuclear Fallout AU / Ino + Mito

She wakes to the dripping of water on her cheek. A sliver of moonlight cuts through the gap in the rubble hanging over her head. Steel and concrete piled haphazardly, dangerous and unknown. A breeze could topple it all. It could withstand the end of time. She doesn’t know. 

Her head throbs. 

A hand to the tender flesh reveals crimson, hot and sticky against her fingertips. She grunts. This is the absolute worst place and time for an injury.

At night  _ They _ grow active. The things that go unnamed and unwanted, the things that seek for life to tear into, to rip away from the bone. Ino hears them more than she sees them. She’s not stupid enough to be out at night, outside the camp, away from safety. Right now it’s less stupidity and more fate trying to screw her over.

No, there’s probably a bit of stupidity too. To think she really thought going out alone during the day was a smart idea — what was she? Twelve? 

Ino pushes herself up to her feet. There’s a momentary spell of dizziness, then she stabilizes. The bleeding has mostly stopped, leaving tacky red smears and clots against her hairline. She’d fallen right through that hole above, hidden by the shifting sand of the desert world humanity called home.

Ino looks around, squinting into the dark. As it is, she’s probably lucky to be alive — due to both the fall and the fact that anything could have attacked her down here. It’s pitch black, the only light from the crack in the ‘ceiling’, and it doesn’t provide enough for a good visual of the place she’s found herself in.

She takes off the head scarf and reties her hair. Well, best not freak out. She’ll never live it down if she dies here. She just  _ knows _ it. Careful of the wound, she wraps the scarf back around her head despite there being no burning sun shining down on her vulnerable skin. Silvery blonde is hidden away under faded purple. 

The night is freezing in comparison to the day. She can already see her breath. 

Ino stands under her one source of light, staring straight up to the moon — and wishes she could fly.

* * *

Everything she’d left with is still on her. Including the small lantern clipped to her belt, though the metal bars are dented from the fall. She nudges the candle back into place and lights it with a match. Matches are precious commodities, but this probably classifies as an emergency. She’s given some illumination and more paranoia, the flickering orange flame scattering shadows and making her feel like she’s seeing things in the corners of her eyes.

She swallows her fear even as sweat starts to bead on her nape despite the temperature. 

If she dies here, she can’t rub it in Sakura’s face that she finally found those damn herbs that the pinkette had been searching for. Ino, no one else.  _ Ino. _ If she dies here, she can’t ask Sai on a date, even if the closest thing to going on a date is hiding from others in a tent that smells like sweat and sunshine, or in the middle of a desert surrounded by nothing and everything, because everything that’s left is nothing at all.

If she dies here, she can’t rub it in Sakura’s face that  _ so what if Ino gave up Sasuke, Ino still found love first. _ Ino. Ino who is a survivor and there’s no damn way in this stupid, sandy hell that she’s dying in the buried wreckage of a wasteland where no one will ever find her.

If Ino dies here, she can’t ever see Shikamaru’s exhausted eyes or hear Chouji’s laughter. Can’t ever feel Naruto at her side like a furnace, hear Sakura whispering and giggling in her ear, see Sasuke’s rough hands following hers as he mimics her gardening skills. Can’t ever spend hours talking to Hinata about things they’re too scared to do, or get into screaming matches with Kiba for letting his irradiated mutt track sand into her tent again, or tell Shino off for letting his pest collection get into her flower pots again. Can’t arm wrestle with Tenten and lose every time, or push people into celebrations and parties with Lee, or hover over Neji’s shoulder as he paints until he gets annoyed and barks at her to leave him alone. 

All those small things make up Ino. Ino is every experience that swells within her, every moment with her friends, the people she loves most.

When Ino makes it back alive, she’s going to ask Sai out.

* * *

There’s a cavern at the far end of the hollow in the wreckage, one that disappears into the dark, tunneling further into steel and earth and remnants of a world before the bombs and the radiation and the Bunkers. 

That’s ancient history for her. She thinks her great-grandparents were among the first to leave the Bunkers, and they were something like twelfth generation Bunker Folk — humanity waiting for centuries to evolve to survive radiation or for parts of the world to settle, whichever came first. 

It’s just sitting here, or it’s venturing into this tunnel. She can’t stay, so she must go, even if it makes her heartbeat pick up. Even if it makes fear slide down her spine like the chill of night. She goes, slow steps terrible and audible in the utter silence, intermixed with her fearful breaths. The lantern swings gently, moving shadows like physical beings.

Deeper and deeper into the tunnel she goes, until the dusty, metallic scent fades and turns to something salty and fresh. For a moment she thinks she catches a whiff of fire. Not candle smoke, no, but the heavy smoke of a burning pyre — timberwood and dried remnants of flammable items picked from the ground.

It feels like she walks for hours, until her feet ache and the candle dances dangerously close to the end of its lifespan. She can think of nothing more terrifying right now than her candle going out and leaving her in the dark, miles and miles into a tunnel that might go nowhere.

So focused on the candle, she forgets to look where she’s stepping. She thinks she hears the sound of a crackling fire, but that must be her imagination. She thinks she hears the sounds of the ocean, but there’s no way that could be so, not under here. Her stomach drops to her feet when her next step forward meets a steep decline.

“Oh — SHIT!” Like a bobsled down a dune of sand, she tumbles and slides and screams all the way down. All too soon, she comes to a stop in a crumpled heap at the bottom of whatever new area she’s ended up in. Somehow she’s kept a hold on her little lantern, though the wick is snuffed out.

Yet she’s not in darkness. The familiar pattern of shadows cast by fire flicker around her.

Ino looks up and wills away her fresh headache. She’s in a cave, or a huge cavern. It’s massive and filled to the brim with huts and shelters, towering and stacked, reaching all the way near the top of the ceiling. Bridges strung between buildings, torches lit along homes and sandy pathways winding through the wood and stone — and at the very end of the massive, impossible cave, it opens up to reveal the beach and the dark, moonlit ocean. 

She has absolutely no idea where she is. She’s never seen another settlement aside from the one she lives in. Never seen anyone but familiar faces when she traveled for resources. The world wasn’t safe and sure — radios meant they could contact other places, but no one risked traveling between them.

Or if they did, they hadn’t come around here.

The flames flicker again and Ino is suddenly aware that she’s not alone. Her screaming tumble had announced her presence quite solidly, all hopes of stealth thrown out the window. From the ramshackle buildings peaked heads of deep crimson and garnet. Around her stood what looked like people, circling her slowly.

Fear.

Absolute fear consumed her.

“What’s this?” A woman walks up, her footsteps silent, her face a maelstrom. She doesn’t stop until she’s only two meters away from Ino, inspecting the blonde like she’s an interesting creature. “A beast from the outside? A  _ Kiri _ spy? What are you waiting for? Kill her!”

Ino backpedals into the slope, her lantern shaking in her trembling hand. “Wait, wait, wait! I’m not — I’m not whatever the hell you’re talking about! I’m Yamanaka Ino, a human!”

The red-haired woman steps closer, her eyes a dark, dark shade of brown; black in the faint light, ominous like hot coals. The shape of her face is vaguely familiar, the garnet locks of long hair as well — and Ino can imagine sharp crimson in the daytime sun. The other people share similar looks. Looks she can pinpoint because there is one story,  _ one story _ that is so prominent in her settlement that everyone knows it. 

Uzumaki Kushina was found wandering the desert years and years ago, when she was just a child. It was Namikaze Minato who found her, and stories are spun about them by little girls and old women because they ended up in love — they ended up giving birth to one Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto, who has features Ino sees in these people.

“What should that mean to us? Creature or human, the danger is the same.” The woman says, her voice commanding. She’s the leader, she must be, with a presence like a monstrous wave. Ready to drown and swallow.

Ino exhales shakily. “You...do you know an Uzumaki Kushina?”

Murmurs break out. 

The woman’s gaze sharpens. “How do you know that name?”

“Red hair?” Ino goes on, seeing the recognition and grasping it tight. “Loud? She was found years ago in, um, the desert. She’s been living in our settlement. She’s married. With a son. He’s my age.” Her mouth runs because she’s nervous. Because this might be the one thing that saves her. “His name is Naruto.”

And —

And the red-haired group pauses. The woman at the front relaxes and it feels like a storm passing. She eyes Ino up and down, her eyes resting on the dried blood stuck to a blonde hairline.

“So she is alive?”

“Yes!” Ino nods sharply. “Really, I think she’ll outlive us all.”

The woman smiles, sharp and with too many teeth. Ino’s skin prickles. “Yes, she just might. Come, child. I am Uzumaki Mito, and I shall treat your injury. No harm will come to you.”

Ino thinks she hears a  _ for now _ hang heavy and unsaid in the air, but she doesn’t say anything because right now? Right now it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow / Support me on [Tumblr](https://spideyfoof.tumblr.com/) and let me know if you'd like to see more of this AU!


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